Category: strategy

In a recently published edited volume, China's Evolving Military Strategy, I examine how Chinese thinking about military strategy is changing by comparing the 2013 edition of The Science of Military Strategy to the 2001 edition. I reach two general conclusions: The 2013 edition represents an evolution of China’s approach to thinking about military strategy. It does not [...]

In a new article in International Security, Fiona Cunningham and I examine whether China will abandon its long-standing nuclear strategy of assured retaliation for a first-use posture. We reach three conclusions: Chinese analysts worry that advances in U.S. strategic capabilities could undermine China's ability to retaliate against a U.S. nuclear attack. China is unlikely to increase [...]

In a new article in the China Brief, I show that terminology in the 2015 defense white paper indicates that China has officially changed its national military strategy. The goal of the new strategy is “winning informationized local wars,” with an emphasis on the maritime domain. This marks only the ninth military strategy that China [...]

Last week, the Carnegie Endowment issued a strategic net assessment of the Asia-Pacific region that I and many others contributed to writing. The report takes a long view, looking out over the next 5-25 years, and outlines five possible futures that range for more cooperative to more conflictual outcomes as well as recommendations for avoiding [...]

Chris Twomey and I have just published an article in The Washington Quarterly on Chinese military strategy. Increasingly, journalists, policy analysts and scholars as well as selected U.S. government documents describe China as pursuing a ''counter-intervention'' strategy to forestall the U.S. ability to operate in a regional conflict. Moreover, the concept of counter-intervention (fan ganyu) is [...]